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If the filesystem type is NTFS, you may not be able to change the permissions without using a non-native driver for NTFS filesystems. That, or it may be mounted read-only. Can you write to the drive at all? What does the 'mount' command report?

If the filesystem type is NTFS, you may not be able to change the permissions without using a non-native driver for NTFS filesystems.

I saw that somewhere, which is why I tried the fstype command. Why does it say "unknown?" Remember, it is a USB device, so it was automounted. I don't know the file type. It was preconfigured. It might very well be NTFS (preconfigured for windows users).

Quote:

Originally Posted by foodown

That, or it may be mounted read-only. Can you write to the drive at all?

Maybe I should just reformat the entire drive? If so, what should I use? ext4? It's a 1 Tera byte drive (999 Gb)

It took me a few years of dual booting Windows/Linux to get to the point of where I'm completely off of Windows. I haven't booted Windows now for 6 months or maybe a year. However, just in case, I want the external drive to be able to be used by windows. If I reformat it, is there a filesystem type I could use that meets all these criteria:

Readable and writeable by both OS's (Linux Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows XP)

Please do not cross-post / double-post your Q: I am going around in a loop here

The problem is that you want linux's chmod to apply to a non-linux filesystem (NTFS). This isn't going to work: NTFS (AFAIK) has no concept of rwxrwxrwx.

I believe there is a recently released win program that will enable win to read ext3 partitions, but as I haven't used win in years, I don't use it and have have forgotten what it might be called. "You know who" is your friend

So, find the win utility, install it, then format the drive as ext3: chmod will work on it (from linux) but win is not likely to understand what that means, or even obey the restrictions that work correctly with linux.

So I think your requirements (1,2,3) are mutually exclusive. Sorry.

An alternative would be to format the drive as ext3/4 and then allow win to access it over your network by running samba on your linux box. This would be my preferred choice.

Readable and writeable by both OS's (Linux Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows XP)

Allows chmod from Linux

Supports a 1Tb drive

= NTFS FAT32 or FAT16

= any linux filesystem

= ext2 ext3 ext4 reiser .....

Thanks, HTH, for this and the other information in this post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

Please do not cross-post / double-post your Q: I am going around in a loop here

I didn't. The other question was written by someone else in 2006. I did post a link to this thread in the other thread stating that more information was here, since that one was never solved. Sorry if that was confusing.

/dev/sda /mnt/hd auto noauto,user 1 2
/wandering
The user part allows users play with it. Writing NTFS is a black art, since windows is supposed to spot if you change anything and go crazy - that was the idea behind ntfs back in the days when M$ thought it was OK for an OS to do a BSOD. Now it's a distinct (and repeated) embarrassment that they try to minimize.
/returning to subject
Don't leave it ntfs; it's hassle writing it from linux. Use fat32 - no hassle for any OS